Doug Cartland's Four-Minute Leadership Advisory
Audacity               
by Doug Cartland
Doug Cartland, Inc.
09/01/2015

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My dad gave me a book on CDs and suggested I give it a listen on one of my many training trips. It was David McCullough's new tome, The Wright Brothers.

I've never been keen on "listening" to books. I'm a note taker, a notorious scribbler and an underliner. If you read a book after me you'd have to delicately step through my ink landmines over and over again.

But given how much I like David McCullough and recalling his narration skills on the PBS documentaries like Ken Burn's The Civil War, I thought I'd give it a go.

I had a long drive in front of me one particular week in July. About 24 hours' worth during that seven day stretch. So an hour or so out from my home, as I split Wisconsin in two on I90 going north, I slid in the first CD.

What a treat.

Somewhere near the Wisconsin Dells I listened to McCullough's aging but still soothing tones tell me the story of Wilbur and Orville's young life. Their bike shop came into focus, I think, around the time I crossed the Mississippi River into Minnesota near Eau Claire.

The seed of their concept of manned flight sprouted around the time I took in the farms of central Minnesota. And the morbid sufferings for their invention came more and more to light as the sun went down near Moorhead and Fargo.

It was as I trimmed along the flatlands of North Dakota the next day that they succeeded at Kitty Hawk.

I drove and listened, drove and listened. Turned out that the book was about 20 hours long and fit neatly into this business excursion of mine.

There was something about hearing this amazing human story while taking in the vista of the great American landscape that somehow made it even more potent to me.

On my return journey, indeed my last day of travel, somewhere I suppose near the sheer rocky cliffs jutting up along the Mississippi near Lacrosse, Wisconsin, McCullough told me this part of the story:

It was the summer of 1909. The Wright's success at Kitty Hawk six years removed.

The United States government had been slow to get onboard with the Wright brothers' work. The brothers had had much more interest in their flying machines from European countries.

But the Americans had finally come around and were thinking seriously of doing business with the Wrights. Government officials naturally wanted to see a demonstration first.

Four thousand people crowded the grounds of Fort Meyer just across the Potomac from Washington D.C. They were "pawing the ground" in anticipation of the flight or so said a newspaperman at the time. Understand, these people had never seen a flying machine fly before.

The crowd included people of prominence. The Senate had adjourned early and joined high ranking army officers, ambassadors, the Speaker of the House and even the son of the president of the United Sates, Charlie Taft.

Wilbur and Orville were there and the plane was in the field poised and ready.

And then they waited.

You see the wind was a bit brisk at 16 miles per hour. Not ideal for the brothers' demonstration.

And...so...they...waited.

Hours passed.

The senators waited.

The Speaker waited.

Decorated army officers waited.

The son of the president waited.

The restless throng of thousands waited.

Put yourself in Orville and Wilbur's shoes for a moment. The eyes of the world upon them. Powerful men who held the purse strings of the American government. Men who were used to other men doing their bidding. Eight thousand eyes all told, their impatience barely corralled.

But the brothers were unmoved. As in all things, if they were going to do this they were going to do it right. No outside force was going to push them into a catastrophe or at minimum a substandard performance. Not even the ego of the moment.

And then, much to the dismay of all those eyes, the Wright brothers scuttled the trial.

As McCullough put it, "Uniformed army signalmen gathered 'like pallbearers' and wheeled the plane away."

Do you get the impact of this? All the pressure in the world was laid to bare on the minds of these two men. Lesser men would have caved to please the crowd. Lesser men would have kowtowed to the power and impatience emanating from the throng.

Do you wonder at their audacity? They knew their craft and they were not going to be burdened by the expectations of even the powerful and the elite.

The Washington Herald marveled at the "utter immunity of the two brothers from the fumes of importunity and the intoxication of an august assemblage."

And one senator said as he departed that day, "I'm damned if I don't admire their independence. We don't mean anything to them..."

Ah the audacity. Not drunk and distracted or moved by the attention of the moment. They kept their laser focus, kept their priorities before them and dared to do what they knew to be right.

A few days later they found the conditions much more to their liking and had an astonishingly successful trial for all to see.

Because of the Labor Day holiday there will be no Advisory next Tuesday. See you in two weeks!
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Sincerely,  

Doug

 

Doug Cartland, President
Doug Cartland, Inc.

 

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